In a few situations, it's nice to be able to get a rep recalc "on demand." In the past, I've simply pinged Marc Gravell about this, but it would be good not to have to bother him.

As an example, this morning I received lots of "dodgy" votes early in the day. They were removed later on, but then that effectively meant that the other votes I'd received up until that point in the day (which hadn't been counted due to the rep limit) still didn't get counted. A quick rep recalc would (possibly? not sure) have sorted this out.

Given that this is an expensive operation, I'd expect a rate limit on this - once per day per user would be adequate, I'd imagine - but it would definitely be handy. I'm hoping it wouldn't take much to implement, given that the moderators already have that ability.

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@jjnguy - why? there are intermittent rep recalcs anyway... it is artificial to cling to false rep. Just accept the delta and move on...
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Marc Gravell♦Aug 13 '09 at 13:02

(-1) For the reasons I described in my answer. I just don't feel this tool would be useful enough for the (probable) CPU stress it would incur, and the likelihood of its overuse.
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devinbAug 13 '09 at 13:02

1

What about just making it so the rep cap is never less than 200?
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Kyle Brandt♦Aug 13 '09 at 13:03

btw... I have some bad new for you re those dodgy votes and a rep-recalc fixing it (ahem)
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Marc Gravell♦Aug 13 '09 at 13:03

2

@Marc, Well, I guess I would be interested in a report showing where the changes came from. I suppose the report could come after the recalc.
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jjnguyAug 13 '09 at 13:04

@jjnguy: I don't think it knows about changes really, beyond the total change. It's just a rebuild from scratch, rather than a diff.
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Jon SkeetAug 13 '09 at 13:06

2

Thanks Marc! I feel like I've been living a lie. Everyone should get a recalc. It will set you free!!!
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jjnguyAug 13 '09 at 13:16

4

Proving that, unlike jinguy, my reputation is built on solid facts and trust, rather than a catalogue of deceit and dodgy business practices.
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devinbAug 13 '09 at 13:27

Oh, never mind I guess, if my new understanding is correct: the report is the actual state, and hence represents the new reputation that will be shown in the header after triggering the recalc. (Mine said total rep 4081 while the header showed 4,360. After clicking the button the report did not change, but the header did.)
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ArjanDec 14 '10 at 13:16

This new facility is useful. Has any thought been given to automatically doing a recalc daily, or every couple of days, or even weekly, for the top users (say the first two or three pages)? I'm not sure whether we're more vulnerable to losing rep over a recalc, but I seem to accumulate 100 excess points every week or two, and I don't know whether other people request recalcs regularly to keep this under control. (I've not worked out where the points go - or how they arrive erroneously.)
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Jonathan LefflerDec 27 '10 at 9:04

How long does it usually take for the reputation screen (on the profile view) to synchronize with the actual /reputation data after I've triggered the "rep recalc"?
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IdolonDec 7 '11 at 16:13

Does this still exist? An update would be nice.
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TimDec 26 '14 at 17:05

@Tim rep recalcs are usual instant now. In the rare cases that they can't be done in realtime, they're re-run daily. I'll try to dig up a reference for the answer...
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Kevin Montrose♦Dec 26 '14 at 17:07

Perhaps we could instead institute regular rep-recalcs (monthly? bi-weekly?) that way, it would still be controlled, rather than user-initiated.

Would it be horribly cruel to automatically perform a rep recalc when a user passed one of the thresholds for gaining new abilities (15, 50, 100, 200, 250, 500, 750, 2000, 3000, 10000)? I know it would be heartbreaking to "gain" an ability only to lose it (temporarily), but it would provide for regular checkpoints to keep reputation more accurate (and between thresholds, it doesn't really matter anyway - as others have said, it should be considered to be approximate).

I'd set it to do the recalc 10% away from the next threshold. So one would occur before getting to the threshold, and at real editing levels would be 1+ days of rep gain before attaining that level (13, 45, 90, 180, 225, 450, 675, 1800, 2700, 9000).
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Adam DavisNov 30 '09 at 18:31

The gain and lose an ability problem just happened to me with the rep recalc.
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alexApr 6 '10 at 0:33

Is it me or does it sound like there's a bug here? Asking for recalculation of rep seems like it's covering up for something being wrong with the rep calcs in the first place. Perhaps the thing to do is fixing whatever it is that causes the problems that people are asking for recalcs over.

If we do need a way for users to request a recalc, may I suggest a once a week limit? I mean, your rep is important, but if it's allowed to be recalculated every day, you know there will be people asking for recalc every single day.

Perhaps every participant in a question should be recalculated when a question is moved or deleted, and when votes are removed due to fraud.
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Jon SkeetAug 13 '09 at 13:22

5

Fraud rep detection and removal, deleted questions and answers, moving questions between sites - all this could adjust the reputation ad hoc, you are right. A much better solution. Then mainly programming errors would make recalcs necessary.
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malachAug 13 '09 at 13:23

John, you beat me by 30 seconds ;-)
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malachAug 13 '09 at 13:23

1

Or if it's too costly to do it on demand, instead of performing the recalc immediately, queue it to be run in a batch job at the end of the day or week (so that one person's rep isn't recalculated several times in close succession).
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EtherOct 10 '09 at 0:30

Within the last month's or so, many questions have been moved between sites. It seems as if recalcs would generate quite some differences by now. The last recalc I can remember is when Jeff had issues implementing the association between accounts. I would like to see a more frequent recalc (maybe monthly). If that was the case, the recalc function asked for by John Skeet here could be limited to 10k users.

It seems to me like this might be something that could be granted to all the 10k+ users, maybe.

But this is likely an issue that affects relatively few users. Probably the top 20-30 on each site. Beyond that this would not have much use, especially since rep is recalculated regularly anyway.

EDIT

I have been now educated that rep is not recalculated on a regular basis. However, recalculating rep is a very CPU expensive operation. Which is why you would not to give 70000 users the ability to have one on demand.

Perhaps we could instead institute regular rep-recalcs (monthly? bi-weekly?) that way, it would still be controlled, rather than user-initiated.